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You may have heard that COINBASE is holding a huge DOGE sweepstakes to celebrate them adding the coin to the site. The grand prize is $300,000 in DOGE. Much wow! If you read the rules though, you have to trade $100 in DOGE to qualify. When I saw that, I was disappointed. My crypto budget is $25 every two weeks. How am I going to enter the contest if I don’t have $100 I can spend on DOGE?
Perhaps you’re in the same boat. You don’t have any money to spend on DOGE. There are other ways to enter this DOGE sweepstakes.
Method 1: Get your crypto $ from another exchange or from a private wallet.
This is the method I chose. While I didn’t have $100 in fiat to spend on DOGE, I did have some DOGE lying around in another wallet. Years ago, I was a DOGE miner and acquired quite a bit (although I sold much of it this spring). I had DOGE in a wallet on BINANCE US. After realizing the fee for sending DOGE to Coinbase would be 50 DOGE (much ouch!), I decided to sell $100 worth of DOGE and buy $100 worth of LTC. The fee to transfer LTC is only $.001 LTC, or about $0.18. Much better.
Once I transferred my LTC to Coinbase, I could sell it for USD and then buy DOGE with that. $100 of trades successfully met.
Method 2: Sell $100 worth of crypto from Coinbase to buy DOGE.
If you’ve been trading for a while on Coinbase, you might have $100 on the site already. Let’s say you have $100 in BTC. You can always sell BTC for $100 USD and buy DOGE. If you don’t want to keep it in DOGE, you can later trade it back to BTC. On Coinbase Pro you have the option to set it up to automatically trade it back to BTC once DOGE raises in value a bit.
The official rules say “Existing account holders and new* account holders must opt-in to participate in the Sweepstakes and must complete $100usd (cumulative the transaction fee)) in trade (buy/sell) of Dogecoin on Coinbase.com (.com and/or Coinbase app)”. I’m not sure whether that means the trades have to be made in USD or if they can be made in BTC, but this method is safest. Use your own discretion.
Method 3: Swing Trade $100 Worth of DOGE.
If you only have a small amount of money (say $25) you can buy and sell DOGE a few times to make up $100 in trades. The sweepstakes ends on June 10th, so you’d have to act fast. Every time you trade, Coinbase charges a fee, so hopefully you’re making up those fees when DOGE goes up and down.
Method 4: Entering by Mail.
I’ve entered a lot of sweepstakes before in my life (won a trip to the American Idol finale once), and by law, sweepstakes can’t require that you buy anything. Coinbase allows you to mail in an entry. “To enter via mail, hand write the following on the front of a 3x5 card, your name, address, city, state, zip, e-mail address, telephone number and date of birth. Insert single card in an envelope and mail with sufficient postage to: Coinbase Dogecoin Sweepstakes, PO Box 738, Syosset, NY 11791-0738 – return address and mailing address on envelope must be handwritten. Mail-in entries must include all requested information (as stated above) to be considered an entry. Mail-in entries must be postmarked by June 10, 2021 and received by June 15, 2021.” If you enter by mail, do EXACTLY as the sweepstakes directions say. If you mess up, they can disqualify you (and you don’t want to do that). This is the cheapest method of entry. If you want to enter, I’d get the entry out in the mail ASAP, because you don’t want to risk having the mail delay your entry.
Other Things to Consider
If you’re entering by trading DOGE, you MUST opt-in to the contest. The last thing you want to do is make your DOGE trades and not be entered into the contest. You can opt in here: https://www.coinbase.com/sweepstakes/dogecoin-launch .
You also have to have a Coinbase account, even if you’re entering via mail. If you don’t have one, you can click on my referral link, and both you and I can get free Bitcoin! Much wow! https://www.coinbase.com/join/ballen_n0mmRA .
The official rules don’t say anything about using Coinbase Pro or the Coinbase Pro app. Because contests like these are often pretty strict, I’d make sure to do my $100 in trades on regular Coinbase (that’s what I’m doing). You can always transfer everything to Coinbase Pro afterwards, since they’re easily linked.
To enter, you have to be 18 years old and a resident of the 50 United States (excluding Hawaii) or the District of Columbia. Sorry international friends!
Good luck!
Relevant Links:
Join Coinbase through my referral for free BTC! https://www.coinbase.com/join/ballen_n0mmRA
Opt into the DOGE contest: https://www.coinbase.com/sweepstakes/dogecoin-launch
